As part of our consulting service specializing in the developmental progress, we needed a method for tracking the developmental process from month to month. The result is our free Developmental Checklist. Our clients use it to track the developmental progress of their children. It is useful for moms and dads of children with developmental difficulties to see and understand the status of their children's developmental progress. It is also effective for all moms and dads to understand and to track the developmental progress of their children, without respect to the developmental situation.

Developing this checklist

When we started consulting with moms and dads about their children's developmental progress, we recognized that many moms and dads do not know much about the developmental progress. Mothers and fathers would tell us stories about what their child did differently this week, but they had little understanding that their child was demonstrating data about the developmental step on which the child was working.

Helping moms and dads understand the developmental progress

We needed something that helped moms and dads understand the developmental progress. We needed something that guided moms and dads to watch for important developmental signals. And, we needed something that would quantify a child's developmental progress. We tried several different forms, looking for something that was effective for moms and dads and caregivers, ourselves, and to other service providers who worked with the children.

We did not want to develop a diagnostic instrument. We wanted something to help moms and dads understand and to keep track of the developmental process of their children.

One of the objectives we had for the form was to have a better way of displaying the overview of the status of the child's developmental progress. The usual way is to describe the child's developmental age as a single number of months or years.

What about this developmental age?

There are numerous difficulties in this approach. For instance, what are the developmental accomplishments used to decide the ?age? of the child? Do we use walking or talking? Do we use gross motor, fine motor, social/emotional, sensory (, etc. . .) accomplishments? Which of these accomplishments is best at indicating the child's age?

Even more of a problem is that for each stages (commonly established at 12, 18, 24, 36, 48, and 60 months), a child with developmental difficulties will have completed some steps and not completed others. These children have begun some steps and not finished them. They have begun some other steps and finished them. And, they have not even begun some steps.

Broad spectrum developmental advancement

In our work the children address the discontinuities in their developmental process. When we reported to the moms and dads the status of the children's developmental progress we wanted to provide a picture of that broad spectrum developmental advancement.

If we are only using some narrow, limited group of developmental accomplishments to define the developmental ?age? of a child, in one month's progress we might miss developmental progress in areas not used to calculate that ?age.? In one month a child might not make progress in the accomplishments used to define the ?age? and make a lot of progress in other developmental accomplishments. We decided our task was to show the broad spectrum developmental advancement that children were making, so we wanted something to describe that.

What about developmental warning-signs?

In the 12-month and 24-month stages, there are some line-items which are not developmental steps. There is also an additional group of line-items, shown in our Developmental Checklist as ?6+ years.? These sections are developmental warning-signs.

These line-items are thought to be warning-signs of likely developmental difficulties. By themselves, when children are demonstrating behaviors shown in these line-items, this does not mean that there is a developmental problem. If a parent sees multiple of these line-items, the moms and dads should consider testing and diagnosis. Our Developmental Checklist is no used for diagnosis, only a professional can do that kind of testing and diagnosis.

Visual Overview

We wanted to give moms and dads the big picture of the broad spectrum developmental advancement. Our Visual Overview page provides a way for seeing that. It demonstrates the current state of the child's developmental progress across each of the stages. It also demonstrates any of the developmental warning-signs the moms and dads has identified.

Items details

Our free Developmental Checklist report also shows how the parent marked each of the line-items, from each of the stages. If moms and dads want to use the checklist on a regularly basis, or to use it at the end of each stages, these line-items details makes it easy to keep track of the answers provided the last time they used it.

Other service providers

We created the checklist report to be effective for medical, psychological, and educational service providers. They will find the information effective for tracking any child's developmental progress.